GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



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EDWARD GOODBIRD 



Issued under the direction of the Council of 
Women for Home Missions 



GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



His Story 



TOLD BY HIMSELF 

TO 

GILBERT L. WILSON 

Author of " Myths of the Red Children," " Indian Hero Tales" 



Illustrated by FREDERICK N. WILSON 




Toronto 

Company 

U RGH 



New York Chicago 

Fleming H. Revell 

London and Edinb 



Copyright, 1914, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 




New York : 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 125 North Wabash Ave. 
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^0/ 





Contents 






Glossary of Indian Words 


. 6 


T 
1 


JdIRTH . 


Q 


II 


Childhood 




III 


The Gods .... 


27 


IV 


Indian Beliefs .... 


. 36 


V 


School Days .... 


43 


VI 


Hunting Buffaloes . 


• 53 


VII 


Farming . 


61 


VIII 


The White Man's Way 


• 7i 



Glossary of Indian Words 

a ha h<5 
al (I) 

a pa tip 
E di & ka ta 
Hi d&t sa 
Ho Wash te 

It si di shi di I ta ka 
It si ka ma hi di 

Ka du te ta 
ku kats 

Ma hi di wi a 
Man dan 
mi h& dits 
Ml m & rf 
na 

S&n tee 

Sioux (Soo). (The plural, spelled also Sioux, is commonly 
pronounced Soos.) 

te pee 

Tsa k& ka sa ki 
TsS wa 

u a ki ke 



FOREWARD 




ATLIN in 1832, and Maximilian in 1S33, have 
made famous the culture of the Mandan and 
Minitari, or Hidatsa. tribes. 



In 1907. I was sent out by the American Museum of 
Natural History, to begin anthropological studies 
among the remnants of these peoples, on Fort Berthold 
Reservation; and I have been among them each sum- 
mer, ever since. 

During these years, Goodbird has been my faithful 
helper and interpreter. His mother, Mahidiwia, or 
Buffalo Bird Woman, is a marvelous source of informa- 
tion on old-time life and beliefs. 

Indians have a gentle custom of adopting very dear 
friends by relationship terms; by such adoption. Good- 
bird is my brother; Mahidiwia is my mother. 

The stories which make this little book were told 
my by Goodbird in August, 191 3. 

I have but put Goodbird's Indian-English into com- 
mon idiom. The stories are his own; in them he has 
bared his heart. 

In 1908, and again in 1913, my brother, Frederick 
N. Wilson, was also sent by the Museum to make 
drawings of Hidatsa arts. Illustrations in this book 
are from studies made by him in those years; a few 
are redrawn from simpler sketches by Goodbird himself. 

7 



8 



FOREWORD 



Acknowledgment is made of the courtesy of the 
Museum's curator, Dr. Clark Wissler, whose permission 
makes possible the publishing of this book. 

May Goodbird's Story give the reader a kindly interest 
in his people. 

Minneapolis. G. L. W. 



An Old Hidatsa Village. 



I 

BIRTH 

I WAS born on a sand bar, near the mouth of the 
Yellowstone, seven years before the battle in 
which Long Hair * was killed. My tribe had 
camped on the bar and were crossing the river in bull 
boats. As ice chunks were running on the Missouri 
current, it was probably the second week in November. 

The Mandans and my own people, the Hidatsas, 
were once powerful tribes who dwelt in live villages 
at the mouth of the Knife River, in what is now North 
Dakota. Smallpox weakened both peoples; the sur- 
vivors moved up the Missouri and built a village at 
* General George A. Custer. 



io GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



Like-a-fish-hook Bend, or Fort Berthold as the whites 
called it, where they dwelt together as one tribe. They 
fortified their village with a fence of upright logs 
against their enemies, the Sioux. 

We Hidatsas looked upon the Sioux as wild men, 
because they lived by hunting and dwelt in tents. Our 
own life we thought civilized. Our lodges were houses 
of logs, with rounded roofs covered with earth; hence 
their name, earth lodges. Fields of corn, beans, 
squashes and sunflowers lay on either side of the village, 
in the bottom lands along the river; these were cultivated 
in old times with bone hoes. 

With our crops of corn and beans, we had less fear 
of famine than the wilder tribes; but like them we 

hunted buffaloes for our 
meat. After firearms 
became common, big 
game grew less plentiful, 

Bone Hoe. and for Several y ears 

before my birth, lew 

buffaloes had been seen near our village. However, 

scouts brought in word that big herds were to be 

found farther up the river and on the Yellowstone, 

and our villagers. Mandans and Hidatsas, made ready 

for a hunt. 

A chief, or leader, was always chosen for a tribal 
hunt, some one who was thought to have power with 
the gods. Xot even- one was willing to be leader. 
The tribe expected of him a prosperous hunt with plenty 
of meat, and no attacks from enemies. If the hunt 
proved an unlucky one. the failure was laid to the 
leader. " His prayers have no power with the gods. 
He is not fit to be leader! " the people would say. 




BIRTH 



ii 



This leader had to be chosen by a military society 
of men, called the Black Mouths. They made up a 
collection of rich gifts— gun, blankets, robes, war 
bonnet, embroidered shirt — and with much ceremony 
offered the gifts, successively, to men who were known 
to own sacred bundles; all refused. 

They prevailed at length upon Ediakata to accept 
half the gifts. " Choose another to take the rest," he 
told the Black Mouths: "I will share the leadership 
with him!" They chose Short Horn. 

The two leaders fixed the day of departure. On the 
evening before, a crier went through 'the village, calling 
out, " To-morrow at sunrise we break camp. Get 
ready, everybody! " 

The march was up the Missouri, on the narrow 
prairie between the foothills and the river. Ediakata 
and Short Horn led, commanding, the one, one day, 
the other, the next. The camp followed in a long line, 
some on horseback, more afoot; a few old people rode 
on travois. Camp was made at night in tepees, or 
skin-covered tents. 

My grandfather's was a large thirteen-skin tepee, 
pitched with fifteen poles. It sheltered twelve persons; 
my grandfather. Small Ankle, and his two wives, Red 
Blossom and Strikes-many-woman; his sons, Bear's 
Tail and Wolf Chief, and their wives; my mother, 
Buffalo Bird Woman, daughter of Small Ankle, and 
Son-of-a-Star, her husband; Flies Low, a younger son 
of Small Ankle; and Red Kettle and Full Heart, mere 
boys, brothers of Flies Low. 

Ascending the west bank of the Missouri, my tribe 
reached the mouth of the Yellowstone at their eleventh 
camp; here the Missouri narrows, offering a good place 



12 GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



to cross. A long sand bar skirted the south shore; 
tents were pitched here about noon. There was not 
room on the narrow bar to pitch a camping circle, and 
the tepees stood in rows, like the houses of a village. 

My grandfather pitched his tent near the place 
chosen for the crossing. The day was cold and windy; 
with flint and steel, my grandfather kindled a fire. 
Dry grass was laid around the wall of the tent and 
covered with robes, for beds. Small logs, laid along 
the edges of the beds, shielded them from sparks 
from the fire. 

At evening the wind died; twilight crept over the 
sky, and the stars appeared. The new moon, narrow 
and bent like an Indian bow, shone white over the 
river, and the waves of the long mid-current sparkled 
silvery in the moonlight. Now and then with a 
swi-i-s-sh, a sheet of water, a tiny whirl-pool in its 
center, would come washing in to shore; while over all 
rose the roar, roar, roar of the great river, sweeping 
onward, the Indians knew not where. 

At midnight a dog raised himself on his haunches, 
pointed his nose at the sky, and yelped. It was the 
signal for the midnight chorus; and in a moment every 
dog in camp had joined it, nose-in-air, howling mourn- 
fully at the moon. Far out on the prairie rose the 
wailing yip-yip-yip-ya-a-aA/ of a coyote. The dogs 
grew silent again and curled up, to sleep. 

And I came into the world. 

Wrapped in a bit of robe, I was laid in my mother's 
arms, her first born; she folded me to her breast. 

The morning sky was growing gray when my father 
came home. He raised the tent door and entered, 
smiling. 



BIRTH 



i3 



"I heard my little son cry, as I came," he said; 
" It was a lusty cry! I am very happy." 
My grandmother placed me in his arms. 

My tribe began crossing the river the same morning. 
Tents were struck, one by one; and the owners, having 
loaded their baggage in bull boats, pushed boldly out 
into the current. 

A bull boat was made by stretching a buffalo skin 
over a frame of willows. It was shaped like a tub and 
was not graceful; but it carried a heavy load. 

Our boat had been brought up from the village on a 
travois, and my father ferried my mother and me 
across. He knelt in the bow, dipping his oar in the 
water directly before him; my mother sat in the tail 
of the boat with me in her arms. Our tent poles, 
tied in a bundle, floated behind us; and our dogs and 
horses came swimming after, sniffing and blowing as 
they breasted the heavy current. We landed tired, 
and rather wet. 

The tribe was four days in crossing; and as the 
season was late, we at once took up our march to the 
place chosen for our winter camp. My mother and I 
now rode on a travois, drawn by a pony. A buffalo 
skin was spread on the bottom of the travois basket; 
this my father bound snugly about my mother's knees 
as she sat, Indian fashion, with her ankles turned to 
the right. I lay in her lap, cuddled in a wild-cat skin 
and covered by her robe. 

We reached Round Bank, the place of our winter 
camp, in five days. My tribe's usual custom was to 
winter in small earth lodges, in the woods by the Mis- 
souri, a few miles from Like-a-fish-hook village; but 



14 



GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



this winter we were to camp in our skin tents, like 
the Sioux. A tent, well sheltered, with a brisk lire 
under the smoke hole, was comfortable and warm. 

No buffaloes had been killed on the way up to the 
Yellowstone; but much deer, elk, and antelope meat 
had been brought into camp, dried, and packed in bags 
for winter, Many, also, of the more provident families 
had stores of corn, brought with them from Like-a-fish- 
hook village. After snow fell, our hunters discovered 
buffaloes and made a kill. We thus faced winter with- 
out fear of famine. 

The tenth day after my birth was my naming day; 
it came just as we were getting settled in our winter 
camp. An Indian child was named to bring him good 
luck. A medicine man was called in, feasted, and given 
a present to name the child and pray for him. As my 
grandfather was one of the chief medicine men of the 
tribe, my mother asked him to name me. 

My grandfather's gods were the birds that send the 
thunder. He was a kind old man, and took me gently 
into his arms and said, " I name my grandson Tsa- 
ka-kfr-sa-ki,— Good-bird!' 3 My name thus became a 
kind of prayer; whenever it was spoken it reminded 
the bird spirits that I was named for them, and that 
my grandfather prayed that I might grow up a brave 
and good man. 

The winter passed without mishap to any one in our 
tent. An old man named Holding Eagle had his leg 
broken digging in a bank for white clay; he was prying 
out a lump with a stick, when the bank caved in upon 
him. Toward spring, Wolf-with-his-back-to-the-wind 
and his brother were surprised by Sioux and killed. A 
man named Drum was also killed and scalped. 



BIRTH 



15 



Spring came, but ice still lay on the Missouri when 
the Goose society gave their spring dance. The flocks 
of geese that came flying north at this season of the 
year were a sign that it was time to make ready our 
fields for planting com. The Goose society was a society 
of women, and their dance was a prayer that the spirits 
of the geese would send good weather for the corn-plant- 
ing. Most of the work of planting and hoeing our corn 
fell to the women. 

Our winter camp now broke up, most of the tribe 
returning to the Yellowstone; but my grandfather and 
One Buffalo, with their families, went up the Missouri 
to hunt for buffaloes. They found a small herd, gave 
chase, and killed ten. 

Four more tepees now joined us, those of Strikes 
Back-bone, Old Bear, Long 
Wing, Spotted Horn, and 
their families. To each 
tent owner, my grand- 
father gave the half of a 
freshly killed buffalo and 
one whole green buffalo 
skin. Camp was pitched; 
the meat was hung on 
stages to dry, and the 
women busied themselves 
making the skins into bull 
boats. 

When the ice on the 
Missouri broke, our camp 
made ready to return to the village, for the women 
wanted to be about their spring planting, Bull boats 
were now taken to the river and loaded; and the 




At Work with a Bone Hoe. 



GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



families, six or seven tepees in all, pushed out into the 
current. 

My parents led, with three boats lashed together, 
in the first of which they sat and paddled; my fath- 
er's rifle lay by him. The second boat was partly 
loaded with bags of dried meat, and upon these sat 
Flies Low, my uncle, with me in his arms. The third 
boat was loaded to the water with meat and skins. 

The Missouri's course is winding; if a turn in it sends 
the current against the wind, the waves rise heavy and 
choppy, so that a single boat can hardly ride them. 
When approaching one of these turns, our party would 
draw together, laying tight hold of one another's boats 
until the danger was passed; bunched together in this 
manner, the boats ran less risk of upsetting. 

Snow had disappeared from the ground, and the grass 
was beginning to show green when we left the Yellow- 
stone. We floated down the great river in high spirits. 
All went well until we neared the mouth of the Little 
Missouri, thirty miles from the village. Then a storm 
arose, and as we rounded a bend, the current carried 
us into the very teeth of the wind. Our flimsy boats, 
sea-sawing up and down on the heavy waves, threatened 
to overturn. 

My parents turned hastily to shore and plied their 
paddles. Suddenly my father leaned over his side of 
the boat, almost tipping it over and tumbling my 
mother in upon him; she caught at the edge of the boat 
to save herself, but had the presence of mind not to 
drop her paddle. Then she saw what had happened; 
I had fallen into the water, and my father was drawing 
me, wet but unhurt, into the boat. 

I have said that my uncle, Flies Low, and I rode in 



BIRTH 



*7 



the second boat I had grown restless, and he had 
loosened my cradle clothes to give me room to move 
my limbs. When we ran into the storm, our boat 
rocked so violently that I slipped from his arms, but 
my loosened clothes made me float. 

" I did not mean to drop the baby/' my uncle said 
afterwards. " I thought the boat had upset and I was 
frightened." He was only a lad, and my mother could 
not blame him. 

We reached shore in a terrible storm of snow and 
wind. The boats were dragged up on the beach; the 
two tents were hastily pitched to shelter the women and 
children; and fires were lighted. tf^S 

My father stopped only long 
enough to see us safe, and then 
pushed on through the storm 
with the horses, which my 
grandfather had been driving 
along the shore in sight of 
the boats. He reached the 
village safely and drove the 
horses into the shelter of some 
woods along the river. 

Boys know that in summer, 
when they go swimming, it 
is warmer to stay in the water, 
than upon the bank, in a wind. 
There was a pond in the 
woods; and our horses waded Flint and Steelj with Bag> 
into the water to escape the 

cold wind. When they came out the wind chilled 
their coats, so that three of them died. 
The storm lasted four days. When it was over, my 





iS 



GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



mother and the rest of the party re-embarked in their 
bull boats and floated safely down to Like-a-fish-hook 
village. 

Of course I remember nothing of these things; but 
I have told the story as I heard it from the Hps of my 
mother. 



Hidatsa Earth Lodge. 



II 

CHILDHOOD 

LIKE-A-FISH-HOOK village stood on a bluff 
overlooking the Missouri, and contained about 
seventy dwellings. Most of these were earth 
lodges, but a few were log cabins which traders had 
taught us to build. 

My grandfather's was a large, well-built earth lodge, 
with a floor measuring about forty feet across. Small 
Ankle, his two wives and their younger children; his 
sons, Bear's Tail and Wolf Chief, and his daughter, 
my mother, with their families, dwelt together. It 
was usual for several families of relatives to dwell 
together in one lodge. 

An earth lodge was built with a good deal of labor. 
The posts were cut in summer, and let lie in the woods 

19 



so GOOD BIRD THE INDIAN 

until snow fell; men then dragged them to the village 
with ropes. Holes were dug the next spring, and the 
posts raised. Stringers, laid along the tops of the 
posts, supported rafters; and upon these was laid a 
matting of willows and dry grass. Over all went a 
thick layer of sods. 
The four great posts that upheld the roof had each 
jsA™ * _- j ^ „ — a buffalo calf skin 

^MBBSSSSSSSUmL or a piece of 
"^Wmwm^ : - ''Wmm bright-colored cal- 

gpjpB M^BWWK. ico bound about it 

^ at the height of 
. ■:- ^ ... . - ■ - - ■: a 

These were offer- 
\ ings to the house 
]h / v ■ • ; V-'e EiJat- 

an earth lodge was 
alive, and that 
the lodge's spirit, 
or soul, dwelt in 
the four posts. 
Small Ankle's Couch. Certain medicine 

women were hired 
to raise these posts in place when a lodge was built. 

Our lodge was picturesque within, especially by the 
yellow light of the evening fire. In the center of the 
floor, under the smoke hole, was the fireplace ; a 
screen of puncheons, or split logs, set on end, stood 
between it and the door. On the right was the corral, 
where horses were stabled at night. In the back of the 
lodge were the covered beds of the household, and my 
grandfather's medicines, or sacred objects. The most 




CHILDHOOD 



21 



important of these sacred objects were two human skulls 
of the Big Birds' ceremony, as it was called. Small 
Ankle was a medicine man and when our corn fields 
suffered from drought, he prayed to the skulls for rain. 

Against the puncheon screen on the side next the fire- 
place, was a couch made of planks laid on small logs, 
with a bedding of robes. This couch was my grand- 
father's bed at night, and his lounging place by 
day. A buffalo skin overhead protected him from 
bits of falling earth or a leak in the roof, when it rained. 

My two grandmothers also used the couch as a bench 
when making ready the family meals; and the water 
and grease spilled by them and trampled into the dirt 
floor made the spot between the couch and the fireplace 
as hard as brick, Small Ankle filed his finger nails 
here against the hard floor. 

The earliest thing that I remember, is my grand- 
father sitting on his couch, plucking gray hairs from 
his head. Indians do not like to see themselves growing 
old, and Small Ankle's friends used to tease him. " We 
see our brother is growing gray— and old! " they would 
say, laughing. Small Ankle used to sit on the edge of 
his couch with his face tilted toward the smoke hole, 
and drawing his loose hair before his eyes, he would 
search for gray ones. 

He had another habit I greatly admired. The 
grease dropped from my grandmothers' cooking, drew 
many flies into our lodge, and as my grandfather sat 
on his couch, the flies would alight on his bare shoulders 
and arms. He used to fight them off with a little 
wooden paddle. I can yet hear the little paddle's spat 
as it fell on some luckless fly, against his bare flesh. 
No war club had surer aim. 



22 GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



His couch, indeed, was the throne from which my 
grandfather ruled his household, and his rule began 
daily at an early hour. He arose with the birds, raked 
coals from the ashes and started a fire. Then we would 
hear his voice, "Awake, daughters; up, sons; out, all 
of you! The sun is up! Wash your faces! " 

My fat grandmothers made a funny sight, washing 
their faces; stooping, with eyes tightly shut, each 
filled her mouth with water, blew it into her palms 
and rubbed them over her face. No towels were used. 

The men of the household more often went down 
for a plunge in the river. Some of the young men of the 
village bathed in the river the whole year, through a 
hole in the ice in winter. 

Many bathers, after their morning plunge, rubbed 
their wet bodies with white clay; this warmed and 
freshened the skin. 

My mother usually washed my face for me; I liked 
it quite as little as any white boy. 

Our morning meal was now eaten, hominy boiled 
with beans and buffalo fat, and seasoned with alkali 
salt— spring salt we called it, because we gathered it 
from the edges of springs. After the meal, I had 
nothing to do all day but play. 

My best loved toy was my bow, of choke-cherry 
wood, given me when I was four years old. My arrows 
were of buck-brush shoots, unfeathered. These shoots 
were brought in green, and thrust into the hot ashes 
of the fireplace ; when heated, they were drawn out 
and the bark peeled off, leaving them a beautiful yellow. 
Buck-brush arrows are light, and I was allowed to shoot 
them within the lodge. 
My uncle, Full Heart, a boy two years older than 



CHILDHOOD 



23 



myself, taught me how to use my bow. In our lodge 
were many mice that nested in holes under the sloping 
roof, and my uncle and I hunted these mice as savagely 
as our fathers hunted buffaloes. I think I was not a 
very good shot, for I do not remember ever killing one. 

But I had the ill luck to shoot my mother. She 
was stooping at her work, one day, when an arrow 
badly aimed struck her in the cheek, its point pierced 
the skin, and the shaft remained hanging in the flesh. 
I saw the blood start and heard my mother cry, " Oh, 
my son has shot me! " I dropped my bow and ran, 
for I thought I had killed her; but she drew out the 
shaft, laughing. 

I was too young to have any fear of the Sioux, and I 
had not yet learned to be afraid of ghosts, but I was 
afraid of owls, for I was taught that they punished little 
boys. Sometimes, if I was pettish, my uncles would 
cry, "The owl is coming! " And in the back of the 
lodge a voice would call, " Hoo, hoo, hoof " This always 
gave me a good fright, and I would run to my grand- 
father and cover my head with his robe, or hide in my 
father's bed. 

It was not the custom of my tribe for parents to 
punish their own children; usually, the father called 
in a clan brother to do this. My uncle, Flies Low, a 
clan brother of my father, punished me when I was 
bad, but he seldom did more than threaten. 

Sometimes my mother would say, " My son is bad, 
pierce his flesh! " and my uncle would take an arrow, 
pinch the flesh of my arm, and make as if he would 
pierce it. I would cry, " I will be good, I will be good ! " 
and he would let me go without doing more than giving 
me a good fright. 



24 



GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



A very naughty boy was sometimes punched by 
rolling him in a snow bank, or ducking him in water 

One winter evening I was vexed at my mother and 
would not go to bed. « Come," she said, hying to 
draw me away, but I fought, kicking at her and scream- 
ing. Quite out of patience, my mother turned to 
Flies Low. " Apatip— duck him! " she cried. \ pail 
of water stood by the fireplace. Flies Low caught me 
up, my legs over his shoulder, and plunged me, head 
downward, into the pail. I broke from him screaming, 
but he caught me and plunged me in again. The 
water strangled me, I thought I was going to die! 

" Stop crying," said my uncle. 

My mother took me by the arm. " Stop crying " 
she said. <: If you are bad, I will call your uncle Main!" 
And she put me to bed. 

We Indian children knew nothing of marbles or 
skates. I had a swing, made of my mother's packing 
strap, and a top, cut from the tip 
of a buff alo's horn. Many boys 
owned sleds, made of five or six- 
buffalo ribs bound side by side. 
With these they coasted down 
the steep Missouri bank, but 
that was play for older boys. Sled of B ™ al ° Ribs ' 

Few wagons were owned by the tribe at this time. 
When journeying, we packed our baggage on the backs 
of ponies, or on travois dragged by do°-=. 

A travois was a curious vehicle. It was made of 
two poles lashed together in the shape of a V. and 
bearing a flat basket woven with thongs. A good dog 
with a travois could drag sixty or eighty pounds over 
the snow, or on the smooth prairie grass. 




CHILDHOOD 



25 



But a travois's chief use was in dragging in wood 
for a lodge fire. In our lodge my mother and my two 
grandmothers, with five dogs, went for wood about 
twice a week. They started at sunrise for the woods, 
a mile or two away, and returned about noon. 

It happened one morning that my father and mother 
went to gather wood, and I asked to go along. " No," 
they said, " you would but be in our way. You stay 




Dog Travois. 



at home! " But I wept and teased until they let me 
go. 

My parents walked before, the dogs following in a 
single file. They were gentle animals, used to having 
me play with them ; and I was amusing myself running 
along, jumping on a travois, riding a bit, and jumping 
off again. 

Our road led to a choke-cherry grove, but it was 
crossed by another that went to the river. As we 
neared the place where the roads crossed, we saw a 
woman coming down the river road, also followed by 
three or four dogs in travois. I had just leaped on the 
travois of one of our dogs. 

The packs spied each other at the same instant; and 



26 



GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



our dogs, pricking up their ears, burst into yelps and 
started for the other pack. I was frightened out of 
my wits. "At, at, air I yelled; for I thought I was 
going to be eaten up. The dogs were leaping along 
at such speed that I dared not jump off. 

The woman with the strange dogs ran between the 
packs crying, " Na, na— go way, go way!" This 
stopped our dogs; and I sprang to the ground and ran 
to my mother. I would never ride a travois again. 

Taking it altogether, children were well treated in 
my tribe. Food was coarse, but nourishing; and there 
was usually plenty of it. Children of poor families 
suffered for clothing, but rarely for food, for a family 
having meat or corn always shared with any who were 
hungry. If a child's parents died, relatives or friends 
cared for him. 

My mother sighs for the good old times. " Children 
were then in every lodge/' she says, " and there were 
many old men in the tribe. Now that we live in cabins 
and eat white men's foods, the children and old men 
die; and our tribe dies!" 

But this is hardly true of the Christian families. 



Ill 



THE GODS 



I HAVE said we Hidatsas 
believed that an earth 
lodge was alive ; and that 
its soul, or spirit, dwelt in the 
four big roof posts. We be- 
lieved, indeed, that this world 
and everything in it was alive 
and had spirits; and our faith 
in these spirits and our wor- 
ship of them made our re- 
ligion. 

My father explained this to 
me. "All things in this world," 
he said, " have souls, or spirits. 
The sky has a spirit; the 
clouds have spirits ; the sun and 
moon have spirits; so have 
animals, trees, grass, water, 
stones, everything. These 
spirits are our gods; and Ave 
pray to them and give them 
offerings, that they may help 
us in our need." 

We Indians did not believe 
in one Great Spirit, as white 




HE 




Seeking His God. 

27 



28 GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 

men seem to think all Indians do. We did believe that 
certain gods were more powerful than others. Of 
these was It-si-ka-ma-hi-di, our elder creator, the 
spirit of the prairie wolf; and Ka-du-te-ta, or Old- 
woman-who-never-dies, who first taught my people to 
till their fields. Long histories are given of these 
gods. 

Any one could pray to the spirits, receiving answer 
usually in a dream. Indeed, all dreams were thought 
to be from the spirits; and for this reason they were 
always heeded, especiaUy those that came by fasting 
and suffering. Sometimes a man fasted and tortured 
himself until he fell into a kind of dream while yet 
awake; we called this a vision. 

A man whom the gods helped and visited in dreams, 
was said to have mystery power; and one who had 
much ^ mystery power, we called a mystery man, or 
medicine man. Almost every one received dreams 
from the spirits at some time; but a medicine man 
received them more often than others. 

A man might have mystery power and not use it 
wisely. There once lived in our village a medicine 
man who had one little son. On day in summer, the 
little boy with some playmates crossed a shallow creek 
behind the village in search of grass for grass arrows. 
It happened that the villagers' fields were suffering from 
drought, and that very day, some old men brought 
gifts to the medicine man and asked him to send them 
rain. 

The medicine man prayed to his gods, and in an 
hour rain fell in torrents. The little boys, seeking to 
return, found the creek choked by the rising waters; 
greatly frightened, they plunged in, and all got 



THE GODS 



29 



safely over but the medicine man's little son; he 
was drowned. 

The medicine man mourned bitterly for his son, 
for he thought it was he that had caused the little boy's 
death. 

Believing as he did that the world was full of spirits, 
even* Indian hoped that one of them would come to 
him and be his protector, especially in war. When a 
lad became about seventeen years of age, his parents 
would say, " You are now old enough to go to war; 
but you should first go out and find your god!" They 
meant by this, that he should not risk his life in battle 
until he had a protecting spirit. 

Finding one's god was not an easy task. The lad 
painted his body with white clay, as if in mourning, 
and went out among the hills, upon some bluff, where 
he could be seen of the gods; and for days, with neither 
food nor drink, and often torturing himself, he cried 
to the gods to pity him and come to him. His suffer- 
ings at last brought on delirium, so that he dreamed, 
or saw a vision. Whatever he saw in this vision was 
his god, come to pledge him protection. Usually this 
god was a bird or beast; or it might be the spirit of 
some one dead; the bird or beast was not a flesh-and- 
blood animal, but a spirit. 

The lad then returned home. As soon as he was 
recovered from his fast, he set out to kill an animal 
like that seen in his vision, and its dried skin, or a part 
of it. he kept as his sacred object, or medicine, for in 
this sacred object dwelt his god. Thus if an otter 
god appeared to him. the lad would kill an otter, and 
into its skin, which the lad kept, the god entered. The 
otter skin was now the lad's medicine; he prayed to it 



30 GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



and bore it with him to war, that his god might be 
present to protect him. 

Indians even made offerings of food to their sacred 
objects. They knew the sacred object did not eat the 
food; but they believed that the god, or spirit, in the 
sacred object, ate the spirit of the food. They also 
burned cedar incense to their sacred objects. 

The story of my uncle Wolf Chief, as he was after- 
wards called, will show what sufferings a young man 
was willing to endure who went out to seek his god. 
He was but seventeen when his father, Small Ankle, 
said to him, "My son, I think you should go 
out and seek your god!" The next morning my 
uncle climbed a high butte overlooking the Missouri, 
and prayed: 

"0 gods, I am poor; I lead a poor life; 
Make me a good man, a brave warrior! 
I want to be a great warrior; 
I want to capture many horses; 
I want to teach much to my people; 
I want to be their chief and save them in their need!" 

For three days and nights, my uncle prayed; and in 
this time he had not a mouthful of food, not a drop of 
water to drink. The fourth day his father came to 
him. " My son," he said, " perhaps the gods would 
have you become a great man : and they are trying 
you, whether you are worthy, You have not suffered 
enough!" 

" I am ready, father," said my uncle. 

Small Ankle fixed a stout post in the ground and 



THE GODS 



3* 



fastened my uncle to it with thongs, so that all day he 
was in great suffering. 

In the evening, Small Ankle came and cut him loose. 
" You have suffered enough, my son/' he said; "I 
think the gods will now pity you and give you a dream !" 

He took my uncle home and gave him something to 
eat and drink; then he laid the boy tenderly upon a 
pile of buffalo skins, before his own medicines. 

For a long time, my uncle could not sleep for the pain 
from his wounds. A little before daylight, he fell into 
a troubled dream. He heard a man outside, walking 
around the earth lodge. The man was singing a 
mystery song; now and then he paused and cried, 
" You have done well, Strong Bull!" 

Small Ankle was very happy when my uncle awoke 
and told him his dream. He knew that one of the gods 
had now come to his son to protect him and help him; 
and he called the boy by his new name, Strong Bull, 
that the god had 
given him. 

Other men had 
different dreams. 
My grandfather 
once told me of a 
man who had a 
vision of four buf- 
falo skulls that be- 
came alive. 

Many years ago 
when our villages 
were on Knife River 
a man named Bush went out to find his god. He 
sought a vision from the buffalo spirits; and he 




Buffalo Skulls. 



32 GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



thought to make himself suffer so that the spirits might 
pity him. He tied four buffalo skulls in a train, 
one behind another, and as Bush walked he dragged 
the train of skulls behind him. 

He made his way painfully up the Missouri, mourning 
and crying to the gods. The banks of the Missouri 
are much cut up by ravines, and Bush suffered greatly 
as he dragged the heavy skulls over this rough country. 

Fifty miles north of the villages, he came to the 
Little Missouri, a shallow stream, but subject to sudden 
freshets; he found the river flooded, and rising. 

He stood on the bank and cried: " O gods, I am poor 
and I suffer! I want to find my god. Other men have 
suffered, and found their gods. Now I suffer much, 
but no god answers me. I am going to plunge into 
this torrent. I think I shall die, yet I will plunge in. 
O gods, if you are going to answer me, do it now and 
save me!" 

He waded in, dragging the heavy skulls after him. 
The water grew deeper. He could no longer wade, he 
had to swim; he struck out. 

He wondered that he no longer felt the weight of the 
skulls, and that he did not sink. The he heard some- 
thing behind him cry, " Whoo-oo-ooh!" He looked 
around. The four buffalo skulls were swimming about 
him, buoying him up; but they were no longer skulls! 
Flesh and woolly hair covered them; they had big, 
blue eyes; they had red tongues. They were alive! 

Bush himself told this story to my grandfather. 

It should not be thought that Bush was trying to 
deceive when he said he saw these things. If one had 
been with him when he sprang into the torrent, and had 
cried, " Bush, the skulls are not alive; it is your delirium 



THE GODS 



33 



that makes you think they live!" he would have 
answered, " Of course you cannot see they are alive! 
The vision is to me, not to you. The flesh and hair and 
eyes are spirit flesh. I see them; you see only the 
skulls!" 

A man might go out many times thus, to find his 
god. If he had ill success in war, or if sickness or mis- 
fortune came upon him, he would think the gods had 
forgotten him ; and he would throw away his moccasins, 
cut his hair as for mourning, paint his face with white 
clay, and again cry to the gods for a vision. 

A medicine man's visions were like other men's; 
but we gave them more heed, because we thought he 
had more power with the gods. We looked upon a 
medicine man as a prophet; his dreams and visions 
were messages to us from the spirits; and we thought 
of his mystery power as white men think of a prophet's 
power to work miracles. Our medicine men sought 
visions for us, and messages from the gods, just as 
white men's preachers study to tell them what God 
speaks to them in His Book. 

A medicine man had much influence in the tribe. He 
cured our sick, called the buffalo herds to us, gave us 
advice when a war party was being formed, and in 
times of drought prayed for rain, 

Worshipping as we did many gods, we Indians did 
not think it strange that white men prayed to another 
God; and when missionaries came, we did not think 
it wrong that they taught us to pray to their God, 
but that they said we should not pray to our own 
gods. " Why," we asked, " do the missionaries hate 
our gods? We do not deny the white men's Great 
Spirit; why, then, should they deny our gods?" 



34 GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



Sometimes Indians who seek to join the mission 
church, secretly pray to their own gods; more often 
an Indian who accepts Jesus Christ and tries to follow 
Him, still fears his old gods, although he no longer 
prays to them. 

Many older Indians, who do not know English, 
look upon Jesus Christ as they would upon one of their 
own gods; a story will show how His mission is some- 
times misunderstood. 

On this reservation lives a medicine woman, named 
Minnie Enemy Heart. When a girl, she went to the 
mission school and learned something about Jesus 
Christ. Afterward, as her fathers had done, she went 
into the hills to seek her god. She says that she fasted 
and prayed, and Jesus came to her in a vision. One 
side of his body was dark, like an Indian; the other 
side was white, like a white man. In His white hand 
he carried a lamb; in the other, a little dog. 

Jesus explained the vision. "My body," He said, 
" half dark and half white, means that I am as much an 
Indian as I am a white man. This dog means that 
Indian ways are for Indians, as white ways are for 
white men; for Indians sacrifice dogs, as white men 
once sacrificed lambs. If the missionaries tell you this 
is not true, ask them who crucified me, were they Indians 
or white men?" 

Many Indians believe this vision. More than fifteen 
have left the Catholic priest to follow Minnie Enemy 
Heart, and three or four have left our Protestant 
mission. 

To us Indians, the spirit world seemed very near, 
and we did nothing without taking thought of the gods. 
If we would begin a journey, form a war party, hunt, trap 



THE GODS 



35 



eagles, or fish, or plant corn, we first prayed to the 
spirits. A bad dream would send the bravest war 
party hurrying home. 

If our belief seem strange to white men, theirs seemed 
just as strange to us. 



IV 



INDIAN BELIEFS 



MANY medi- 
cine men 
added to 
their mystery power 
by owning sacred 
bundles, neatly bound 
bundles of skin or 
cloth, containing sa- 
cred objects or relics 
that had been handed 
down from old times. 
Every bundle had its 
history, telling how 
the bundle began and 
what gods they were 
that helped those 
who prayed before it. 
There were about 
sixty of these sacred 
bundles in the tribe, 
when I was a boy. 




Medicine Post and Sacred Bundle. 



The owner of a sacred bundle was called its keeper; 
he usually kept it hung on his medicine post, in the 
back part of his lodge. A sacred bundle was looked 

36 



INDIAN BELIEFS 



37 



upon as a kind of shrine, and in some lodges strangers 
were forbidden to walk between it and the fire. 

When a keeper became old, he sold his sacred bundle 
to some younger man, that its rites might not die with 
him. The young man paid a hundred tanned buffalo 
skins and a gun or pony, and made a feast for the keeper; 
at this feast, the young man received the bundle with 




Shrine and Sacred Bundle of the Big Birds' Ceremony. 



the rites and songs that went with it. This was called, 
" making a ceremony." 

White men think it strange that we Indians honored 
these sacred bundles; but I have heard that in Europe 
men once honored relics, the skull, or a bone, or a bit 
of hair of some saint, or a nail from Jesus 7 cross; that 
they did not pray to the relic, but thought that the 
spirit of the saint was near; or that he was more willing 
to hear their prayers when they knelt before the relic. 

In much the same way, we Indians honored our 
sacred bundles. They contained sacred objects, or 



38 



GOOD BIRD THE INDIAN 



relics, that had belonged each to some god— his scalp, 
or skull, the pipe he smoked, or his robe. We did not 
pray to the object, but to the god or spirit to whom it 
had belonged, and we thought these sacred objects 
had wonderful power, just as white men once thought 
they could be cured of sickness by touching the bone 
of some saint. 

A medicine man's influence was greater if he owned 
a sacred bundle. Men then came to him not only 
because the spirits answered him when he fasted, but 
because, as its keeper, he had power from the gods of 
the sacred bundle. 

The most famous of these sacred bundles belonged to 
my grandfather, Small Ankle. It was called the bundle 
of the^ Big Birds' ceremony. It was kept on a kind of 
stand in the back part of our lodge, and it contained two 
skulls and a carved wooden pipe. These objects were 
thought to be very holy. 

When my tribe came up the Missouri to Like-a-fish- 
hook Bend, where they built their last village, they 
first camped there in tepees. A question arose as to 
how they should plan their village, and the more im- 
portant medicine men of the tribe came and sat in a 
circle, to consider what to do. This was seven years 
after the small-pox year. 

At that time, the skulls of the Big Birds' ceremony 
were owned by an old man named Missouri River. 
The other medicine men, knowing that these skulls 
were most important sacred objects in the tribe, said 
to Missouri River, " Your gods are most powerful. 
Tell us how we should lay out our village!" 

Missouri River brought the two skulls from his tent, 
and holding one in either hand, he walked around in 



INDIAN BELIEFS 



39 



a wide circle, returning again to the place where he 
had started. " We will leave this circle open, in the 
center of our village/' he said. " So shall we plan it! " 

He laid the skulls on the grass and said to Big Cloud, 
Small Ankle's son-in-law, " Your gods are powerful. 
Choose where you will build your earth lodge! " 

Big Cloud arose. " I will build it here," he said, 
" where lie the two skulls. The door shall face the west, 
for my gods are eagles that send thunder, and eagles 
and thunders come from the west. And so I think 
we shall have rain, and our children and our fields 
shall thrive, and we shall live here many years." Big 
Cloud had once seen a vision of thunder eagles, awake 
and with his eyes open. 

The medicine men said to Has-a-game=stick, " You 
choose a place for your lodge! " 

Has-a-game-stick stood and said, " My god is the 
Sunset Woman. I want my lodge to face the sunset, 
that the Sunset Woman may remember me, and I will 
pray to her that the village may have plenty and enemies 
may never take it, and I think the Sunset Woman will 
hear me!" 

The medicine men said to Bad Horn, " You stand up ! " 

Bad Horn stood and said, " My gods are bears, and 
bears always make the mouths of their dens open 
toward the north. I want my lodge door to open toward 
the north, that my bear gods may remember me. And 
I will pray to them that this village may stand many 
years! " 

The medicine men then said to Missouri River, 
" Choose a place for your lodge! " 

Missouri River took the two skulls, one in either 
hand, and singing a mystery song, walked around the 



40 G00DBIRD THE INDIAN 



circle with his right hand toward the center, as moves 
the sun. Three times he walked around, the fourth 
time he stopped at a place and prayed, " My gods, 
you are my protectors, protect also this village. Send 
also rains that our grain may grow, and our children 
may eat and be strong and healthy. So shall we pros- 
per, because my sacred bundle is in the village." 

He turned to the company upon the grass. " Go, 
the rest of you," he said, " and choose where you will 
build your lodges; and keep the circle open, as I have 
marked! " 

Before Missouri River died, he sold his sacred bundle 
to my grandfather, Small Ankle; and Small Ankle 
sold it to his son, Wolf Chief. After Wolf Chief became 
a Christian, he sold the bundle to a man in New York, 
that it might be put into a museum. 

We had other beliefs, besides these of the gods. 

We thought that all little babies had lived before, 
most of them as birds, or beasts, or even plants. My 
father, Son-of-a-Star, claimed he could even remember 
what bird he had been. 

We believed that many babies came from the babes' 
lodges. There were several of these. One was near our 
villages on the Knife River. It was a hill of yellow 
sand, with a rounded top like the roof of an earth lodge. 
In one side was a little cave, and the ground about the 
cave's mouth was worn smooth, as if children played 
there. Sometimes in the morning, little footprints were 
found in the sand. 

To this hill a childless wife would come to pray for 
a son or daughter. She would lay a pair of very beauti- 
ful child's moccasins at the mouth of the cave and 
pray: " I am poor. I am lonesome. Come to me, one 



INDIAN BELIEFS 



4i 



of you! I love you. I long for you! " We understood 
that children who came from this babes' lodge had 
light skin and yellowish hair, like yellow sand. 

A very old man once said to me: "I remember my 
former life. I lived in a babes' lodge. It was like a 
small earth lodge inside. There was a pit before the 
door, crossed by a log. Many of the babes, trying to 
cross the pit, fell in. But I walked the whole length 
of the log; hence I have lived to be an old man." I 
have heard this story from other old men. 

Very small children, who died before they teethed 
or were old enough to laugh, were not buried upon 
scaffolds with our other dead, but were wrapped in skins 
and placed in trees. We thought if such a baby died, 
that its spirit went back to live its former life again, 
as a bird, or plant, or as a babe in one of the babes' 
lodges. 

Older children and men and women, when they died, 
went to the ghosts' village. This was a big town of 
earth lodges, where the dead lived very much as they 
had lived on earth. Older Indians of my tribe still 
believe in the ghosts' village. 

There were men in my tribe who had died, as we 
believed, and gone to the ghosts' village, and come 
back to life again. From these men we learned what 
the ghosts' village was like. 

My mother's grandfather came back thus, from the 
ghosts' village; his name was It-si-di-shi-di-it-a-ka< or 
Old Yellow Elk. 

Old Yellow Elk had an otter skin for his medicine, 
or sacred object. He died in the small-pox year; and his 
family laid his body out on a hill with the otter skin 
under his head for a pillow. Logs were piled about 



42 



GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



the body, to keep off wolves. Men were dying so fast 
that there was no time to make burial scaffolds. 

That night a voice was heard calling from the hill, 
" A-ha-he! i-ha-he! Come for me, I want to get 
up!" 

The villagers ran to the grave and took away the 
logs, and Old Yellow Elk arose and came home. 

w The ghosts' village is a fine town," he told his 
family. " I saw many people there, they gave me a 
spotted pony. My god, the otter, brought me back. 
He led me up the bed of the Missouri, under the water. 
I brought my pony with me and tied him to a log on 
my grave! " 

His family went out to the grave the next morning 
and looked for the pony's tracks, but found none! 
All these things I firmly believed, when I was a boy. 



V 



SCHOOL DAYS 



I WAS six years old when 
Mr. Hall, a missionary, 
came to us, from the 
Santee Sioux. He could not 
speak the Mandan or the Hi- 
datsa language, but he spoke 
Sioux, which some of our 
people understood. He was a 
good singer; and he had a 
song which he sang with Sioux 
words. Our people would 
crowd about him to hear it, 
for it was the first Christian 
3ong they had ever heard. 
The song began: 

"Ho washte, ho washte, 
On Jesus \ itan miye; 
Ho wakan o kan, 
Nina hi i v r' 

The words are , t nslation 
of an English hy i: 




The Sun Man (Redrawn from 
a sketch by Goodbird). 

43 



44 



GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



"Sweetly sing, sweetly sing, 
Jesus is our Saviour king; 
Let us raise, let us raise. 
High our notes of praise!'' 

It is a custom of my people to give a name to every 
stranger who comes among us. either from some singu- 
larity in his dress or appearance, or from something 
that he says or does. Our people caught the first two 
words of the missonary's song and named him after 
them, Ho Washte. He is still called by this name. 

Mr. Hall had brought his wife with him, and they 
began building a house with timbers freighted up the 
river on a steamboat. Our chief, Crow's Belly, threat- 
ened to burn the house, but the missionary made him a 
feast and explained that he wanted to use the house 
for a school, where Indian children could learn English. 
Crow's Belly thought this a good plan, and made no 
further trouble. 

The school was opened the next winter. It was soon 
noised^ in the village that English would be taught in 
the mission school, and several young men started to 
attend, my uncle, Wolf Chief, among them. They 
went each morning with hair newly braided, faces 
painted, and big brass rings on their fingers. ' Most 
of them found school work rather hard, and soon 
tired of it. 

The next fall, my parents started me to school, for 
my father wanted me to learn English. The mission 
house was a half mile from our village; I went each 
morning with a little Mandan companion, named 
Hollis Montclair, We wore Indian dress, leggings, 
moccasins, and leather shirt. 



SCHOOL DAYS 4 - 

At noon Hollis and I would return to the village for 
our noon meal; and sometimes we would go to school 
again in the afternoon. We went pretty faithfully 
all the fall, and until Christmas time, when our teacher 
told us we were to have a Christmas tree. 

Hollis and I had never seen a Christmas tree; and 
when Christmas day came, we could hardly wait until 
the time came for us to go to the school house. It was 
a cheerful scene then, that met our eyes. The tree was 
a cedar cut on the Missouri bottoms, lighted, and 
trimmed with strips of bright colored paper. Mr 
Hall and his family sat at the front, smiling. My teacher 
moved about among the children, greeting each as he 
arrived, and speaking a kind word to those that were 
shy. About fifteen school children of the age of Hollis 
and myself were present. 

We had music and singing, and Mr. Hall explained 
what Christmas means, that it is the birthday of Jesu* 
the Son of God; and that we should be happy because 
He loved us. Presents were then given us; each child 
was called by name, and handed a little gift taken 
from the tree. 

And now I grieve to say, that Hollis and I acted as 
badly as two white children. There was a magnet 
hanging on the tree, a piece of steel shaped like a hor*e 
shoe, that picked up bits of iron. Hollis and I though^ 
it the most wonderful thing we had ever seen We 
each hoped to receive it; but it was given to another 
child. This vexed us; and we left upon the floor the 
gifts we had received, and stalked out of the room. 
The last thing I saw as I went out of the door was my 
teacher with her handkerchief to her eves. I did not 
feel happy when I thought of this; but I was an Indian 



46 GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



boy, and I was not going to forgive her for not giving 
me the magnet ! 

I told the story of the magnet to my parents; and 
finding I was unwilling to go back to the mission, they 
sent me to the government school that our agent had 
just opened; but I did not go there long. I was taken 
sick, and my former teacher came to see me in our 
earth lodge. She was so kind and forgiving that I 
forgot all about the magnet, and when I got well I went 
back to the mission school. 

I grew to love my teacher, although I was always a 
little afraid of her. We boys were not allowed to talk 
in study hours; but when our teacher's back was turned, 
we would whisper to one another. Sometimes our 
teacher turned quickly, and if she caught any of us 
whispering, she would come and give each of us a spat 
on the head with a book; but it did not hurt much, so 
we did not care. 

We used to sing a good deal in the school. One song 
I liked was, " I need Thee every hour." I loved to 
sing, although the songs we learned were very dif- 
ferent from our Indian songs. Indians are fond of 
music; I have known my grandfather and three or four 
cronies to sit at our lodge fire an entire night, drumming 
and singing, and telling stories. 

I found English a rather hard language to learn. 
Many of the older Indians would laugh at any who 
tried to learn to read. " You want to forsake your 
Indian ways and be white men," they would say; but 
there were many in the village who wanted their chil- 
dren to learn English, 

My grandfather was deeply interested in my studies. 
" It is their books that make white men strong,"Jie 



SCHOOL DAYS 



47 



would say. " The buffaloes will soon be killed; and we 
Indians must learn white ways, or starve." He was a 
progressive old man. 

I am sorry to say that I played hookey sometimes. 
Big dances were often held in the village; especially, 
when a war party came in with a scalp, there was great 
excitement. The scalp was raised aloft on a pole, and 
the women danced about it, screaming, and singing 
glad songs. Warriors painted their faces with charcoal, 
and danced, sang, yelled, and boasted of their deeds. 
Everybody feasted and made merry. 

When I knew that a dance was going to be held, I 
would hide somewhere in the village, instead of going 
to school. The next day my teacher would say, 
" Where were you yesterday?" "At the dance," I would 
answer. She would then tell me how naughty I was; 
but she never punished me, for she knew if she did, 
I would leave the school. My parents also scolded, 
but did not punish me. I am afraid I was a bad little 
boy! 

One day, on my way to school, I was overtaken by 
a very old white man, with white hair. I had been 
going to school about a year and could talk a little 
English. 

" What is your name, little fellow? " the old man 
asked. He had a friendly voice. 

" My name is Goodbird," I answered, 
" But what is your English name? " 
" I have none." 

" Then I will give you mine," the old man said, 
smiling. " It is Edward Moore." 

It is a common custom for an Indian to give his name 
to a friend; so I did not know the old man's words were 



48 



GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



said in fun. At the school. I told Mr. Hall what the 

old man had said, and he laughed. " I think Moore 
is not a good name for you," he said. " Moore sounds 
like moor, a marshy place where mists rise in the air, 
but Edward is a very good name." 

So I have called myself Edward Goodbird ever since. 

Every Friday Mr. Hall gave a dinner in the mission 
house to his pupils. We Indian children thought 
these dinners wonderful. Many of us had never tasted 
white men's food; some things, as sour pickles, we did 
not like. Mr. Hall wanted us to learn to eat white 
bread and biscuits, so that we would ask our mothers 
to bake bread at home. He hoped this would be a 
means of getting us to like white men's ways. 

On Saturdays we had no school, and Mr. Hall would 
go around the village, shaking hands with the Indians 
and inviting them to come to church the next morning. 
Later, Poor Wolf acted as his crier, and on Saturday 
evenings he would go around, calling out, " Ho Washte, 
Ho Washte! Come you people, to-morrow, and sit for 
him !" He meant for them to come to church the 
next morning and sit in chairs. 

Mr. Hail's janitor, a young Indian named Bear's 
Teeth, swept out the mission house, made the fires, and 
got the school room ready for the services. There was 
no bell on the mission, so a flag was run up as a signal 
for the congregation to gather. 

Not man}" came to the services, fifteen or twenty 
were a usual congregation, sometimes only ten. Mr. 
Hall preached, and to make his sermons" plainer, he 
often drew pictures on the blackboard. 

My father thought the missionary's religion was good, 
but would not himself forsake the old ways. M The old 



SCHOOL DAYS 



49 



gods are best for me/' he used to say, but he let me go 
to hear Mr. Hall preach. I cannot say that I always 
understood the sermon. Sometimes Mr. Hall would 
say, " Thirty years ago, my friends, I saw the light! " 
I thought he meant he had seen a vision. 

But I learned a good deal from Mr. Hall's preaching; 
and my lessons and the songs I learned at school made 
me think of Jesus ; but I thought an Indian could be a 
Christian and also believe in the old ways. 

It came over me one day, that this could not be. 
A story of our Indian god, It-si-ka-ma-hi-di, tells us 
that the sun is a man, with his body painted red, like 
fire; that the earth is flat, and that the sky covers it 
like a bowl turned bottom up; but in my geography, 
at school, I learned that the earth is round. 

In our earth lodge, that night, I said to my parents, 
" This earth is round; the sun is a burning ball! " My 
cousin Butterfly was disgusted. " That is white man's 
talk/' he grunted. " This earth is flat. White men are 
foolish! " This I would in no wise admit, and I came 
home almost daily with some new proof that the earth 
was round. 

As I grew older and began to read books, I thought 
of myself as a Christian, but more because I went to the 
mission school, than because I thought of Jesus as my 
Saviour. I loved to read the stories of the Bible; 
and Mr. Hall taught me the Ten Commandments. Some 
of the Indian boys learned to swear, from hearing white 
men; but I never did, because Mr. Hall told me it was 
wrong. I thought that those who did as the Bible 
bade, would grow up to be good men. 

I had a cousin, three years older than myself, in the 
Santee Indian school, who had become a Christian. 



So GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



One day I received a letter from him. "I believe in 
Jesus' way," he wrote. " I believe Jesus is a good 
Saviour. I have tried His way, and I want you to try 
to join in and have Him for your Saviour.' ' This letter 
set me to thinking. 

In these years, my life outside the school room was 
wholly Indian. We Hidatsa children knew nothing of 
base ball, or one hole cat, or other white children's 
games, but we had many Indian games that we played. 
Some of these games I think better than those now 
played on our reservation. 

In March and early April, we boys played the hoop 
game. A level place, bare of snow, was found, and the 
boys divided into two sides, about thirty yards apart. 
Small hoops, covered with m rg 



caught, was sent hurtling through the air, the object 
being to hit some one of the opposing players. 

The game was played but a few weeks, for as soon 
as the ice broke on the Missouri, we boys went to the 
high bank of the river, and hurled our hoops into the 
current. We were told, and really believed, that they 




Hoop and Stick of the Hoop Game. 



.SCHOOL DAYS 



became dead buffaloes as soon as they had passed out 
of sight, beyond the next point of land. Such buffaloes, 
drowned in the thin ice of autumn and frozen in, came 
floating down the river in large numbers at the spring 
break-up. The carcasses were always fat, and the 
frozen flesh was sweet and tender. 

After the first thunder in spring, we played 
u-a-ki-he-ke, or throw stick. Willow 
rods were cut, peeled, and dried, 
and then stained red, with ochre, or 
a bright green, with grass. These 
rods, darted against the ground, 
rebounded to a great distance. The 
player won whose rod went far- 
thest. U-a-ki-he-ke is still played on 
the reservation. 

In June, when the rising waters 
have softened the river's clay banks, 
we fought sham battles. Each boy 
cut a willow withe, as long as a 
buggy whip, and on the smaller end 
squeezed a lump of wet clay. With 
the withe as a sling, he could throw 
the clay ball to an astonishing War Bonnet 
distance. Hidatsa and Mandan boys (0n Lod§e Post) - 
often fought against one another, using these clay 
balls as missiles. 

It was exciting play, for we fought like armies, each 
side trying to force the other's position; when an attack 
was made, a storm of mud balls would come whizzing 
through the air like bullets. A hit on the bare flesh 
stung like a real wound. Once one of my playmates 
was hit in the eye, and badly hurt. I was just over 




52 GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



fourteen, when my parents let me join in the grass 
dance, or war dance, as the whites call it. The other 
dancers made me an officer, and my father was so 
pleased, that he hung up a fine eagle's feather war 
bonnet in our lodge. " If enemies come against us," 
he said, " my son shall go out to fight wearing this 
war bonnet!" 

One evening, Bear's Arm, a lad of eighteen years, 
came in from hunting a strayed pony; he was much 
excited. "I saw two Sioux in war dress, hiding in 
a coulee," he told us. 

Our warriors ran for their ponies. " Put on your 
war bonnet," my father said to me. " I am going 
to take you in the party. Keep close to me; and if 
there is a fight, see if you cannot strike an enemy!" 

We rode all night, Bear's Arm leading us. We 
reached the coulee and surrounded it a little before 
daybreak, and with the first streak of dawn, we closed 
in, our rifles ready; but we found no enemies. 

This was my one war exploit. 




Buffaloes, 



VI 

HUNTING BUFFALOES 

THE summer I was twelve years old, our village 
went on a buffalo hunt, for scouts had brought 
in word that herds had been sighted a hundred 
miles west of the Missouri. My father, Son-of-a-Star, 
was chosen leader of the hunt. 

My tribe no longer used travois, for the government 
had issued wagons to us. These we took apart, loading 
the wheels into bull boats while the beds were floated 
over the river. We made our first camp at the edge 
of the foot hills, on the other side of the river. 

The next morning, we struck tents, loaded them 
into our wagons, and began the march. 

S3 



54 GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



My father led, carrying his medicine bundle at his 
saddle head; behind him rode two or three elder 
Indians, leaders of the tribe, also on horseback. Then 
followed the wagons in a long line; and on either side 
rode the young men, on their tough, scrubby, little 
ponies. 

Some of our young men as they rode, drove small 
companies of horses. Neighbors commonly put their 
horses together, and a young man, or two or three 
young men, acted as herders. Sometimes a girl, 
mounted astraddle like a man, drove them. 

Now and then a youth might be seen reining in his 
pony to let the line of wagons pass, while he kept a 



Clay Pot with Thong Handle, afternoon, we made camp. 



m a big circle, and the women pitched the tents, 
while the men unhitched and hobbled their horses, 
and brought firewood. The women brought water and 
lighted the fires. 

Water was carried in pails. I have heard that in 
old times, they used clay pots made of a kind of red 
clay, and burned; a thong went around the neck of 
the pot, for a handle. 




sharp watch for his sweet- 
heart. She hardly glanced 
at him as she rode by, for it 
was not proper for a young 
man's sweetheart to let him 
talk to her in the march- 
ing line. The time for court- 
ship was in camp, in the 
evening. 



Toward five or six in the 



The wagons were drawn up 



HUNTING BUFFALOES 



55 



My mother, an active woman, often had her fire 
started before her neighbors. While she got supper, 
my father sat and smoked. Friends frequently joined 
him, and they would sit in a circle, passing the pipe 
around, telling funny stories and laughing. My father 
was a capital story teller. 

For supper we had deer or antelope meat, boiled or 
roasted, and my mother often fried wheat-flour dough 
into a kind of biscuits that were rather hard. Corn 
picked green the year, before, and boiled and dried, 
was stewed in a kettle, making a dish much like the 
canned corn we buy at the store* More often we had 
succotash, hominy boiled with fat and beans, We 
drank black coffee, sweetened ; my mother put the coffee 
beans into a skin, pounded them fine with an ax, and 
boiled them in an iron pot. You see, we were getting 
civilized. 

When supper was ready, my mother would call 
" Mi-ha-dits — I have done!" and my father would put 
up his pipe and come to eat. My mother gave him 
meat, steaming hot, in a tin dish, and poured coffee 
into a cup; another cup held meat broth, which made a 
good drink also. We did not bring wooden feast bowls 
with us, as some families did. 

My mother and I ate with my father, much as white 
families do; a robe or blanket was spread for each to 
sit upon. 

I wore moccasins and leggings; and my hair was 
braided, Indian fashion, in two tails over my shoulders, 
but my mother had made me a white man's vest, of 
black cloth, embroidered all over with elk teeth. I 
was proud of this vest, and cared not a whit that I had 
no coat to wear over it. 



56 GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



The seventh day out, we made camp near the Cannon 
Ball River. My father had sent two mounted scouts 
ahead, with a spy glass, to see if they could find the 
herds; at evening, they returned with the report, 
" There is a big herd yonder!" Everybody got ready for 
the hunt the next morning, and my father 
made me happy by telling me that I might 
go along. 

We arose early. My father saddled two 
ponies, one of them a pack animal; and I 
mounted a third, with a white man's saddle. 
My father's were pack saddles, of elk horn, 
covered with raw hide; ropes, looped up like 
a figure 8, were tied behind them to be used 
in binding the packs of meat we would bring 
home from the hunt. 

There were about forty hunters in our party, 
mounted, and leading each a pack horse; eight 
boys, of twelve or fifteen years of age, and 
three old men. I remember one of the old 
men carried a bow and arrows, probably from 
old custom. Only the hunters expected to take 
part in the actual chase of the buffaloes; 
they were armed with rifles. 
Quirt The party's leader, E-di-a-ka-ta — the same 

Whi* 1 ) Wh ° led ° Ur tribe t0 the Yellowstone — r ^de 
ahead, and we followed at a brisk trot. Five 
miles out of camp, the two scouts were again sent ahead 
with the spy glass. We saw them coming back at a 
gallop and knew that the herd was found, and we 
urged our horses at the top of their speed. I 
remember the slap of the quirts on the little 
ponies' flanks; and the heat-beat, beat-beat! of their 



HUNTING BUFFALOES 



hoofs on the hard ground. Indians do not shoe their 
horses. 

We drew rein behind a hill, a half mile to leeward 
of the herd, and, having dismounted, hobbled our led 
horses. Our hunters laid aside their shirts and leggings, 
stripped the saddles from their ponies' backs, and 
twisted bridles of thong into their ponies' mouths; it 
was our tribe's custom to ride bare-back in the hunt. 

E-di-a-ka-ta went a little way off and stood, facing 
in the direction of the herd; from a piece of red cloth 
he tore a long strip, ripped this again into three or 
four pieces and laid them on the ground. I saw his 
Hps move, and knew he was praying, but I could not 
hear his words. The pieces of red cloth were an offer- 
ing to the spirits of the buffaloes. 

Our hunters remounted and drew up in a line facing 
the herd, E-di-a-ka-ta on the right, and at a signal, 
the line started forward, neck-and-neck, at a brisk gallop. 
A guard, named Tsa-wa, or Bear's Chief, rode in advance; 
if a hunter pressed too far forward in the line, Tsa-wa 
struck the hunter's pony in the face with his quirt. 

We boys and the three old men rode a little behind 
the line of hunters; we did not expect to take part 
in the hunt, but wanted to see the kill. 

As we cleared the brow of the hill we sighted the 
buffaloes, about four hundred yards away, and 
E-di-a-ka-ta gave the signal, " Ku'kats — Now then!" 
Down came the quirts on the little ponies' flanks, 
making them leap forward like big cats. The line 
broke at once, each hunter striving to reach the herd 
first and kill the fattest. An iron-gray horse, I remem- 
ber, was in the lead. 

We boys followed at breakneck speed — unwilling- 



58 GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



ly on my part; my pony had taken the bit in his 
mouth and was going over the stony ground at a speed 
that I feared would throw him any moment and break 
his neck and mine. I tugged at the reins and clung 
to the saddle, too scared to cry out. 

Bang! A fat cow tumbled over. Bang! Bang! Bang! 
Bang! The frightened herd started to flee, swerved to 
the right, and went thundering away up wind, in a 
whirl of dust. Buffaloes, when alarmed, fly up wind 
if the way is open; their sight is poor, but they have 
a keen scent, and running up wind they can nose an 
Indian a half mile away. 

For such heavy beasts, buffaloes have amazing speed, 
and only our fastest horses were used in hunting them ; 
indeed, a young bull often outran our fastest ponies. 

Only cows were killed. The flesh of bulls is tough 
and was not often eaten; that of calves crumbled when 
dried, making it unfit for storing. 

Some buffalo calves, forsaken by the herd, were 
running wildly over the prairie, bleating for their 
mothers; two of our hunters caught one of the smallest 
with a lariat, and brought it to me. " Here, boy," 
they said, " keep this calf." 

I caught the rope and drew the calf after me; but 
my pony, growing frightened, reared and kicked the 
little animal; paying out more rope, I led the calf at a 
safer distance from my horse's heels. 

The hunters came straggling back, and my father 
seeing the calf, cried out, " Let that calf go! Buffaloes 
,are sacred animals. You should not try to keep one 
captive!" I was much disappointed, for I wanted to 
take it into camp. 

My father had killed three fat cows, and these he 



HUNTING BUFFALOES 



59 



now sought out and dressed. The shoulders, hams, and 
choicer cuts he loaded on our led horse, covering the 
pack with a green hide and tying it down with the raw- 
hide ropes brought for the purpose; the rest he left 
in a pile on the prairie, covered with the other two 
hides. We intended to return for „ . 




cuts; I did not like to see good meat wasted, and 
when I thought he was not looking, I slyly put the 
pieces back on the pile. 

We returned to camp slowly, at times urging our 
ponies to a gentle trot, more often letting them walk. 
My father had to dismount several times to secure our 
pack of meat, which threatened to slip from our pack 
horse's back. In our tent that evening, I heard him 



6o GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



telling my mother of my part in the hunt. " Our son/' 
he said, " is no wasteful lad. He put back some tough 
leg pieces that I had thrown away. He would not see 
good meat wasted!" And they both laughed. 

Stages were built in the camp, and for two days, 
every body was busy drying meat or boiling bones for 
marrow fat. The dried meat was packed in skin bags, 
or made into bundles; the marrow fat was run into 
bladders; and all was taken to Like-a-fish-hook village, 
to be stored for winter. 




Goodbird at the Age of Twenty. (Redrawn from Portrait by Gilbert 
Saul. Report Indian Census, 1890.) 



VII 

FARMING 

THE time came when we had to forsake our village 
at Like-a-fish-hook Bend, for the government 
wanted the Indians to become farmers. " You 
should take allotments," our agent would say. " The 
big game is being killed off, and you must plant bigger 
fields or starve. The government will give you plows 
and cattle." 

All knew that the agent's words were true, and little 
by little our village was broken up. In the summer 
of my sixteenth year nearly a third of my tribe left to 
take up allotments. 

^ We had plenty of land ; our reservation was twice the 
size of Rhode Island, and our united tribes, with the 
Rees who joined us, were less than thirteen hundred 



62 GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



souls. Most of the Indians chose allotments along 
the Missouri, where the soil was good and drinking water 
easy to get. Unallotted lands were to be sold and the 
money given to the three tribes. 

Forty miles above our village, the Missouri makes 
a wide bend around a point called Independence Hill, 
and here my father and several of his relatives chose 
their allotments. The bend enclosed a wide strip of 
meadow land, offering hay for our horses. The soil 
along the river was rich and in the bottom stood a thick 
growth of timber. 

My father left the village, with my mother and me, 
in June. He had a wagon, given him by the agent; 
this he unbolted and took over the river piece by piece, 
in a bull boat; our horses swam. 

We camped at Independence in a tepee, while we 
busied ourselves building a cabin. My father cut the 
logs; they were notched at the ends, to lock into one 
another at the corners. A heavier log, a foot in thick- 
ness, made the ridge pole. The roof was of willows 
and grass, covered with sods. 

Cracks between the logs were plastered with clay, 
mixed with short grass. The floor was of earth, but we 
had a stove. 

We were a month putting up our cabin. 

Though my father's coming to Independence was a 
step toward civilization, it had one ill effect: it removed 
me from the good influences of the mission school, so 
that for a time I fell back into Indian ways. Winter, 
also, was not far off; the season was too late for us to 
plant corn, and the rations issued to us every two weeks 
rarely lasted more than two or three days. To keep 
our family in meat, I turned hunter. 



FARMING 



63 



There were no buffaloes on the reservation, but black- 
tailed deer were plentiful, and in the hills were a good 
many antelopes. I had a Winchester rifle, a 40.60 
caliber, and I was a good shot. 

To hunt deer, I arose before daylight and went to 
the woods along the Missouri. Deer feed much at 
night, and as evening came on, they would leave the 
thick underbrush by the river and go into the hills 
to browse on the rich prairie grasses. I would creep 
along the edge of the woods, rifle in hand, ready to 
shoot any that I saw coming in from the feeding grounds. 

I was careful to keep on the leeward side of the game; 
a deer running up wind will scent an Indian as quickly 
as a buffalo. 

I loved to hunt, and although a mere boy, I was one 
of the quickest shots in my tribe. I remember that 
one morning I was coming around a clump of bushes 
when I saw a doe and buck ahead, just entering the 
thicket. I fired, hardly glancing at the sights; I saw 
the buck fall, but when I ran up I found the doe lying 
beside him, killed by the same bullet. 

Independence was a wild spot. The hill from which 
the place took its name had been a favorite fasting place 
for young men who sought visions; at its foot, under 
a steep bank, swept the Missouri, full of dangerous 
whirlpools. Such spots, lonely and wild, we Indians 
thought were haunts of the spirits. 

Once, when I was a small boy, my father took me to 
see the Sun dance. A man named Turtle-no-head 
was suspended from a post in a booth, and dancing 
around it. Turtle-no-head's hands were behind him, 
and he strained at the rope as he danced. Women 
were crying, " A4a4a-la4a4a! " Old men were calling 



6 4 



GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



out^ " Good; Turtle-no-head is a man. One should be 
willing to suffer to find his god; then he will strike many 
enemies and win honors!*" 

I was much stirred by what I saw, and by the old 
men's words. 

" Father/' I said, " when I get big, I am going to 
suffer and seek a vision, like Turtle-no-head! " 

" Good! " said my father, laughing. 

At Independence, I thought of this vow made years 
before. One day, I said to my father, " I want you to 
suspend me from the high bank, over the Missouri." 

When evening came, my father stripped me to my 
clout and moccasins, and helped me paint my body 
with white clay. He called a man named Crow, and 
they took me to the bank, over the Missouri. My 
father fastened me to the rope, and I swung myself 
over the bank, hanging with my weight upon the rope. 
"Suffer as long as you can!" called my father, and 
left me. 

I did not feel much pain, but I became greatly 
wearied from the strain upon my back and thighs. 
Toward morning I could stand it no longer. I drew 
myself up on the bank, and went home and to bed; and 
I slept so soundly that no dream came from the spirits. 

A year later, I again sought a vision. This time 
my father took me to a high hill, a mile or two from the 
river. He drove a post into the ground, fastened me 
to it, as before, and left me, just at nightfall. 

I threw myself back upon the rope and danced around 
the post, hoping to fall into a swoon and see a vision. 

It was autumn, and a light snow was falling; the cold 
flakes on my bare shoulders made me shiver till my 
teeth chattered. The night was black as pitch. A 



FARMING 



65 



coyote howled. I was so lonely that I wished a ghost 
would sit on the post and talk with me, though I was 
dreadfully afraid of ghosts, especially at night. I grew 
so cold that my knees knocked together. 

About two o'clock in the morning, I untied the rope 
and went home. For an hour I felt sick, but I soon 
fell into a sleep, again dreamless. 

I was eating my breakfast when my father came in. 
" I have seen no vision, father," I told him; he said 
nothing. 

The next year the government forbade the Indians 
to torture themselves when they fasted. My father 
was quite vexed. " The government does wrong to 
forbid us to suffer for our gods! " he said. But I was 
rather glad. " The Indian's way is hard," I thought. 
"The white man's road is easier!" And I thought 
again of the mission school. 

Other things drew my thoughts to civilized ways. 
Our agent issued to every Indian family having an allot- 
ment, a plow, and wheat, flax, and oats, for seeding. 
My father and I broke land near our cabin, and in the 
spring seeded it down. 

We had a fair harvest in the fall. Threshing was 
done on the agency machine, and, having sacked our 
grain, my father and I hauled it, in four trips, to Hebron, 
eighty miles away. Our flax we sold for seventy-five 
cents, our wheat for sixty cents, and our oats for twenty- 
five cents a bushel. Our four loads brought us about 
eighty dollars. 

I became greatly interested in farming. There was 
good soil on our allotment along the river, although 
our fields sometimes suffered from drought; away from 
the river, much of our land was stony, fit only for grazing. 



66. 



GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



My parents had been at Independence eight years, 
when one day the agent sent for me. I went to his 
office. 

" I hear you have become a good farmer/' he said, 
as I came in. " I want to appoint you assistant to our 
agency farmer. Your district will include all allotments 
west of the Missouri between the little Missouri and 
Independence. I will pay you three hundred dollars 
a year. Will you accept? " 

" I will try what I can do," I answered. 

"Good," said the -Major. "Now for your orders! 
You are to measure off for every able-bodied Indian, 
ten acres of ground to be plowed and seeded. If an 
Indian is lazy and will not attend to his plowing, report 
him to me and I will send a policeman. In the fall, 
you are to see that every family puts up two tons of 
hay for each horse or steer owned by it." 

I did not know what an acre was. " It is a piece of 
ground," the agent explained, " ten rods wide and 
sixteen rods long." From this I was able to compute 
pretty well how much ten acres should be; but I am 
not sure that all the plots I measured were of the same 
size. 

I began my new duties at once, and at every cabin 
in my district, I measured off a ten-acre plot and 
explained the agent's orders. Not a few of the Indians 
had done some plowing at Like-a-fish-hook village, 
and all were willing to learn. Once a month, I took 
a blacksmith around to inspect the Indians' plows. 

Rains were abundant that summer, and the Indians 
had a good crop. Some families harvested a hundred 
bushels of wheat from a ten-acre field; others, seventy- 
five bushels; and some had also planted oats. 



FARMING 



67 



The government began to issue cattle in payment of 
lands sold for us. The first issue was one cow to each 
family, and the agent ordered me to see that every 
family built a barn. 

These barns were put up without planks or nails. 
A description of my own will show what they were like; 
it rested on a frame of four forked posts, with stringers 
laid in the forks; puncheons, or split logs, were leaned 
against the stringers for walls: rough-cut rafters sup- 
ported a roofing of willows and dry grass, earthed over 
with sods. 

More cattle were issued to us until we had a consider- 
able herd at Independence. The cattle were let run 
at large, but each steer or cow was branded bv its 
owner. Calves ran with their mothers until fall; the 
herd was then corralled and each calf was branded 
with its mother's brand. My own brand was the 
letters SU on the right shoulder. 

Herders guarded our cattle during the calving season; 
we paid them ten cents for every head of stock herded 
through the summer months. 

I had been assistant fanner six years and our herd 
had grown to about four hundred head, when Bird 
Bear and Skunk, our two herders, reported that some 
of our cattle had strayed. "We have searched the 
coulees and thickets, but cannot find them." they said. 
Branding time came; we corralled the herd and 'found 
about fifty head missing. 

. We now suspected that our cattle had been stolen. 
Cattle thieves, we knew, were in the country: they had 
broken into a corral one night, on a ranch not far from 
Independence and killed a cowboy named Long John. 
Winter had passed, when the agent called me one day 



68 



GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



into his office. " Goodbird," he said, " I want you to 
take out a party of our agency police and find those 
thieves who stole your cattle. Start at once! " 

I got my party together, eight in all; Hollis Mont- 
clair, my boyhood chum; Frank White Calf, Crow Bull, 
Sam Jones, White Owl, Little Wolf, No Bear, and 
myself. Only Hollis and I spoke English. 

We started toward the Little Missouri, where we sus- 
pected the thieves might be found. I drove a wagon with 
our provisions and tent; my men were mounted. We 
reached the Little Missouri before nightfall, and camped. 

The next morning, we 
turned westward; before 
noon, we crossed a prairie , 
dog village, and shot 
three or four prairie dogs 
for dinner. The hair was 
singed off the carcasses, and 
they were drawn, and spitted 
on sticks over the fire. Prairie 
dogs are not bad eating, especially V^^^^^^^^^^t 
in the open air, by a good wood fire; 
I have never become so civilized Praine Dogs, 

that I would not rather eat out of doors. 

Toward evening we met a cowboy. "How!" I 
called, as I drew in my team. " Have you seen any 
stray cattle, with Indian brands, ID, 7 bar, 7, or the 
like?" And I told him of our missing cattle. 

" I know where they are," said the cowboy. " You 
will find them on a ranch near Stroud's post-office; 
but don't tell who told you!" 

" Have no fear," I answered. 

Stroud's post-office was farther west, near the Mon- 




FARMING 



69 



tana border; we reached it the third or fourth day 
out. 

We made camp, and after supper, I went in and 
told Mr. Stroud our errand. 

" Yes/' he said, " your cattle are three miles from 
here, on a ranch owned by Frank Powers; he hired two 
cowboys to steal them for him." 

The next morning my men and I mounted, and leav- 
ing our wagon at Stroud's, started for Powers' ranch. 
I was unarmed; the others of my party had their rifles. 

We stopped at the cabin of a man named Crockin, 
to inquire our way. A white man came in; after he 
had gone out again, I asked Crockin, " Who is that man?" 

" He is Frank Powers," said Crockin. 

I turned to my men and said in their own language, 
" That is the man who stole our cattle." 

Little Wolf drew his cleaning rod. " I am going to 
give that bad white man a beating," he cried angrily. 

" You will not," I answered. " We will go into 
Powers' pasture and round up his cattle; and I will cut 
out all that I think are ours. If that bad white man 
comes out and says evil words against me, do nothing. 
If he shoots at me, kill him quick; but do not you shoot 
first!" 

My men loaded their rifles, and about two o'clock 
I led them into the pasture. Powers' cattle were all 
bunched in a big herd; we drove them to a grassy flat, 
and I began cutting out those that were ours. 

Powers saw us and came out, revolver in hand, and 
two or three white men joined him. He was so angry 
that he acted like a mad man; he grew red in the face, 
talked loud, and swore big oaths; but he did not shoot, 
for he knew my men would kill him. 



70 G00DBIRD THE INDIAN 



I cut about twenty-five head out of the herd, all 
that I found with altered brands on the right shoulder 
or thigh. Maybe I took some of Powers' cattle by 
mistake, but I did not care much. 

Powers left us after a while. My men rounded up 
our cattle, and we drove them back to Stroud's and 
camped. 

After supper, I asked Mr. Stroud to write a letter 
to our agent, telling him what I had done. " To- 
morrow," I told my men, " we mil set out for home. 
You drive our cattle back to the reservation in short 
stages, so that they will not sicken with the heat. I 
will go ahead with Mr. Stroud's letter." 

I set out before sunrise; at four o'clock I reached 
Independence, eighty miles away; and at sunset. I 
was at Elbowoods. 

It w T as Decoration day, and the Indians were having 
a dance. The agent was sitting in his office with the 
inspector, from Washington. 

" I have found our cattle," I said; and I gave him 
Mr. Stroud's letter. 

He read it and handed it to the inspector. 

" Report this matter to the United States marshal," 
the inspector said to him. " Tell him to have Powers 
arrested." 




The Chapel at Independence. 



VIII 

THE WHITE MAN'S WAY 

MY thirty-fifth winter— as we Indians count 
years— found me still assistant farmer; but 
time had brought many changes to our reser- 
vation. Antelope and blacktailed deer had gone the 
way of the buffalo. A few earth lodges yet stood, 
dwellings of stern old warriors who lived in the past; 
but the Indian police saw that every child was in school 
learning the white man's way. A good dinner at the 
noon hour made most of the children rather willing 
scholars. 

^ The white man's peace had stopped our wars with the 
Sioux; and the young folks of either tribe visited, 
and made presents to one another. I had visited the 
Standing Rock Sioux, and had learned to rather like 

7* 



72 GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



them. Indeed, I liked one Sioux girl so well that I 
married her. We had a comfortable cabin; my wife 
was a good cook, and my children were in school. 

Living so far from the mission, it was not possible 
for me to attend church services at the mission house; 
but Mr. Hall came to Independence and preached to 
us. Until a school house was built, he often held his 
meetings in my cabin. 

I usually interpreted for him. He would speak in 
English and I would translate into Hidatsa, which the 
Mandans also understand. Indians are good linguists; 
not a few young men of my tribe speak as many as four 
or five languages. 

I drew no salary as interpreter; but I felt myself 
well repaid by what I learned of the Bible. Interpret- 
ing Mr. Hall's sermons made them sink into my heart, 
so that I would think of them as I went about my work. 

As time w T ent on, there grew up quite a company of 
Christians at Independence. One of their active leaders 
was Frank White Calf; and he and Sitting Crow called 
a kind of praying council at Two Chiefs 1 cabin. All 
the Independence Christians came; and I w r as invited 
to meet them. 

Some of the Indians prayed; and Frank White Calf 
asked me, " Goodbird, why do you not join us in this 
Christian way? Tell us your mind!" 

I arose and spoke: " My friends, I learned of this 
Christian way at the mission school. It is a good way. 
You ask me my thoughts. I answer. I have tried to 
live like a Christian and I love to read my Bible, but I 
have not received baptism; I am now ready to be 
baptized." 

A few days after this, Frank White Calf said ! to me. 



THE WHITE MAN'S WAY 



73 



"Mr. Hall wants you to come to the mission house and 
be baptized." 

I went the next Sunday with my family, and was 
received into the church. My sons Charles and Alfred 
were baptized at the same time. 

In part, I was influenced to become a church member 
by the thought that it was the white man's way. Our 
Indian beliefs, I felt sure, were doomed; for white 
men's customs were becoming stronger with us each 
year. " I am traveling the new way, now!" I thought, 
when I was baptized. " I can never go back to Indian 
ways again." 

But for some years, even after I became a church 
member, I was not a very firm Christian; and I did 
not keep God's commandments very well, because I 
did not believe all that the missionaries taught me. 
I was unwilling to trust any white man's words, until 
I had proved that they were true. I did not want to 
take anything on faith. 

Mr. Hall made Independence a preaching station, 
and put an assistant in charge; I interpreted for her. 
Sometimes Mr. Hall, or his son, preached to us. 

The missionary teacher let me know each week what 
was to be the next Sunday's lesson, and she gave me 
books to read. Knowing something of her subject, I 
was better able to interpret for her. In this way, also, 
I learned more of Christ's teachings; and I learned how 
to study my Bible. 

This study of the Bible influenced me a great deal; 
and my having to interpret made me fall into the habit 
of going to church regularly. My interest in church 
work grew. 

In 1903, the government abolished the position of 



74 



GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



assistant farmer. In October of the following year, 
Mr. Hall's son said to me, " We need an assistant 
missionary at Independence, and my father and I want 
to appoint you. Come and talk with my father about 
it." 

I went to Elbowoods and saw Mr. Hall. " Edward," 
he asked, " are you willing to be our assistant mis- 
sionary?" 

" Yes," I answered. 

I knew some one must preach to the Independence 
Indians; and I thought I could do this, because I could 
speak their language as well as read English. I felt 
also that I was closer to God than I had been when I 
was baptized. 

So I became Mr. Hall's assistant, and have been in 
charge of the Independence station ever since. Every 
Sunday I preach to the Indians in the Hidatsa language. 
My text is the Sunday-school lesson of the week, for 
we Indians do not care for sermons, such as white men 
hear. Our older men cannot read English, and we do 
not have the Bible in our own tongue; we like best 
to hear the Sunday-school lesson because it explains 
the stories of the Bible, which my people cannot read 
for themselves. 

Things do not always go smoothly in an Indian con- 
gregation. Frictions and misunderstandings arise, as I 
have heard they do in white churches; and Indians 
sometimes seek to become church members from un- 
worthy motives. Our former life makes us Indians 
clannish; members of the same clan feel bound to help 
one another, and many Indians seem to look upon the 
church as a kind of clan. Sometimes a young man will 
say, " I will be baptized and join your church. Then 



THE WHITE MAN'S WAY 



75 



all the Christians will work to make me agency police- 
man!" 

Others, again, will say, "I want to join the church 
because I am sick; perhaps God will make me well!" 

Some, with clearer faith, say, " I want to become a 
Christian because I believe Jesus will save me to be a 
spirit with Him." They mean that they hope Jesus 
will take them to live with Him when they" die. 
^ My uncle, Wolf Chief, says of the Christian way: 
"I traveled faithfully the way of the Indian gods, 
but they never helped me. When I was sick, I prayed 
to them, but they did not make me well. I prayed to 
them when my children died; but they did not answer 
me. I have but two children left, and I am going to 
trust God to keep these that they do not die like°the 
others. I talk to God even- day, as I would talk to 
my father; and I ask Him for everything I want. I 
try to do all that He bids me do, I hope that He will 
take my spirit to travel in that new heaven about 
which I have learned. I cannot change now. I can 
never go back to the old gods!" 

_ Wolf Chief has been a strong Christian for more than 
eight years. He has given much to our mission work; 
and he is never absent from Sunday sen-ices. 

Six years ago, we Christians at Independence became 
dissatisfied with our log meeting house, and began to 
talk of building a chapel, or church-house, as we call 
it. A council was called in Wolf Chief 's cabin. 

It was an evening in December; all the leading 
Christians of Independence came with their wives- 
Wolf Chief, Tom Smith, Frank White Calf, Mike Basset, 
Hollis Montclair, Sam Jones, Louis Baker, and myself! 
Each woman brought something for a feast, and we ate 



7 6 



GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



together. We had fried bread, tea, pie, tomato soup, and 
other good things. 

When our feasting was over. Wolf Chief made a speech. 
" We Christian Indians/' he said, " should have a chapel. 
We should raise the money to build a house to God, 
where we can go and worship!'' 

Tom Smith and others spoke, and we called for 
subscriptions. Frank White Calf's wife gave five 
dollars. Wolf Chief's brother, Charging Enemy, although 
not a Christian, gave a pony. Others promised, some 
ten, some fifteen, and some twenty-five dollars. 

I was appointed treasurer to make collections, and 
get more subscriptions. I wrote a letter to Water 
Chief's dancing society and asked them to give some- 
thing. The dancing Indians are pagans; but they gave 
us a subscription. 

Mr. HaU gave us fifty dollars; [Mr. Shultis, our 
school-teacher, gave us ten dollars; and other white 
friends gave us subscriptions; but most of the money 
was given by the Indians. 

When we had collected three hundred and fifty dollars, 
we began buying lumber. 

Wolf Chief wanted to give us the land for our chapel; 
but the Indian commissioner wrote, " No, you may sell 
your land, but you must not give it away." So we 
bought the land for a dollar an acre; but Wolf Chief 
gave the money back to us, outwitting the commis- 
sioner after all! 

We bought ten acres. " When white men build a 
house/' said Wolf Chief, " they leave land around it 
for a yard. We should be ashamed not to have some 
land around God's house! " Our ten-acre plot makes 
a fine big church yard; at one end is our Indian cemetery. 



THE WHITE MAN'S WAY 



77 



Wolf Chief also gave us a colt, and much money, and 
bought paint and nails. 

We Indians think Wolf Chief wealthy. He owns 
five hundred acres of land, thirty head of cattle, eight 
horses, and pigs and chickens; he has a potato field 
and a corn field, and owns a trading store. 

More than fifty were present when we dedicated our 
chapel. A minister from Minneapolis preached the 
sermon, and I interpreted for him. A young white 
lady sang, and played the organ, and my cousin played 
a clarionet. Our school teacher had lent us his phono- 
graph, and it sang " There are ninety and nine/ 7 just 
like a choir in a city church. I asked for subscriptions 
to clear off our debt, and we raised eighty-three dollars 
in money, and Wolf Chief gave us another colt. The 
minister prayed God to bless our chapel, and we went 
home, all very happy. 

Older Indians, who came from Like-a-fish-hook 
village, find their life on allotments rather lonesome. 
Cabins are often two or three miles apart and the old 
men cannot amuse themselves with books, for they 
cannot read. In old times, Indians often met in big 
dances; but pagan ceremonies are used in these dances, 
and Mr. Hall does not like the Christian Indians to 
go to them. 

That our Christian Indians may meet socially now 
and then, we now observe many white men's holidays; 
and at such times, we make our chapel the meeting place. 
In August, we hold a Young Men's Christian Con- 
vention, when families come from miles around, to 
camp in tents around the chapel. At Christmas, we 
have feasting and giving of presents; and our chapel 
is so crowded that many have to stand without, and 



78 GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



look through the windows. Of late years, we have 
also observed Decoration Day at Independence. 

Our camp last Decoration Day was ten or more tents, 
with two or three families in a tent. We made a booth, 
after old custom, of leafy branches and small trees. In 
this we gathered at about ten o'clock. 

Our school teacher began our exercises with a speech 
telling us what Decoration Day should mean to us. 
We sang " America," and other hymns, and had speeches 
by Indians. A committee had been appointed to choose 
the speakers. 

Rabbit Head spoke, " I do not know anything about 
your way, but I encourage you! Go on, do more. I 
have nothing against your going the Christian way! " 
Rabbit Head is a chief in the Grass dance society, and a 
pagan. 

Wounded Face spoke, "I do not belong to this 
church, I am a Catholic; but I thus show that I like 
white men's ways! " 

After dinner we made ready to decorate our graves. 
Every family having a son buried in our graveyard, 
hired a^ clan father to clean the grave of weeds and 
stones; if a daughter, a clan aunt was asked. An Indian 
calls the members of his mother's clan, his brothers and 
sisters; members of his father's clan, he calls his clan 
fathers and aunts. 

At two o'clock we formed a procession and marched 
to the cemetery. Two aged scouts led, High Eagle and 
Black Chest ; High Eagle bore a large American flag. 
We marched by two's in a long line, the men first, then 
the women and children. Having marched around the 
graveyard, we stood and sang some hymns, and I made 
a speech : _ 

R C 1 0. 5 



THE WHITE MAN'S WAY 



79 



" All you relatives and friends of these dead, I want 
to make a speech to you ! 

" It seems sad to our hearts to come here, and yet we 
are glad, because we come to remember our loved ones 
at their graves; so both gladness and sorrow are in our 
hearts. 

" These warrior men, that you see here, fought against 
our enemies. They fought to save us, so that to-day 
we are not captive, but free. Some of the brave men 
who fought to save us, died in battle. Also, some of 
your loved ones have died and are buried in this grave- 
yard. Many of these loved ones did not die fighting 
against enemies, yet they were brave warriors against 
evil and temptation. Xow they are gone from us. 
They are in a new world, the ghost land; they are 
with God. I am sure they are in a safe, happy 
place. 

" Now come forward, all who want to put flowers on 
the graves." 

We had had a cold, dry spring, and the prairie flowers 
had not come into bloom, but we had sent to Plaza 
and bought artificial silk flowers. The clan fathers 
and aunts placed these flow T ers on the graves, while 
many of the women wept. 

We Hidatsas know that our Indian ways will soon 
perish; but we feel no anger. The government has 
given us a good reservation, and we think the new way 
better for our children. 

I think God made all peoples to help one another. 
We Indians have helped you white people. All over 
this country are corn fields; w T e Indians gave you the 
seeds for your corn, and we gave you squashes and 



8o 



GOODBIRD THE INDIAN 



beans. On the lakes in your parks are canoes; Indians 
taught you to make those canoes. 

We Indians think you are but paying us back, when 
you give us schools and books, and teach us the new 
way. 

For myself, my family and I own four thousand acres 
of land; and we have money coming to us from the 
government. I own cattle and horses. I can read 
English, and my children are in school. 

I have good friends among the white people, Mr. 
Hall and others, and best of all, I think each year I 
know God a little better. 

I am not afraid. 



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